In 1985, I was drafted into the Israeli military for three years. Two of those were in the explosives company of the paratroop brigade, one of Israel’s more rigorous infantry units. Zeev Jabotinski, a right-wing Zionist thinker, once wrote that the Jewish community in Palestine would have to erect an…

I recently spoke with an old friend who directs a very large a humanitarian operation in Afghanistan. …

What should Israelis living outside the country do about registering their children with the Israeli Population Registry as citizens? The question raises a host of moral, political, legal, financial and practical questions. I’m a citizen from way back (1979), when my parents emigrated from the US to Jerusalem. My kids…

I’ve been thinking a lot about global public opinion towards China, with special emphasis on countries targeted by China’s massive infrastructure investment scheme, the “Belt and Road” initiative. Face-to-face, telephone, and internet surveys are all providing streams of new data on public opinion towards China from around the world…

In October 20, Sudan signed an historic agreement to open diplomatic ties with Israel. This deal was part and parcel of a broader, last-minute Trump administration drive to notch up high-profile Middle East policy successes before the US presidential election. …

In the days since the attempted coup in Washington DC — which Azimuth Social Research advisor Chuck Call aptly dubbed a “self-coup” — many commentators have unwittingly resorted to racist tropes to critique Trump, implicitly denigrating the inhabitants of countries with lower per capita incomes and darker skins. — Consider journalist Leonard Greene, who wrote in the New York Daily News, Welcome to America, a would-be third-world dictatorship. Or consider Republican Senator Marco Rubio, who that this is 3rd world style anti-American anarchy. …

Building public support for human rights reform is crucial. Without a broad and deep public constituency, legislators will not pass the necessary laws, supervisors will not enforce new rules, and citizens will not demand real accountability and change. By James Ron, Azimuth Social Research For a long time now, we have known that non-governmental rights groups play a key role in these reform efforts. They lobby lawmakers and government, report abuses, and mobilize public attention, and these efforts are sometimes successful. All too often, however, human rights groups…

At the 1995 Beijing world conference, feminists worked hard to elevate gender concerns by promoting the slogan, “women’s rights are human rights.” — Over time, they hoped, ordinary people would come to view gender equality, protection from domestic violence, and other critical issues facing women as no less important than the rights of male political activists seeking protection from torture and imprisonment.

Protesters pray outside as decisions are handed down at the Supreme Court in Washington, DC, USA, 08 July 2020. The Supreme Court ruled that federal employment discrimination laws do not apply to teachers who teach religion at schools run by churches and they upheld the Trump administration’s rollback of the…